Africa/Egyptian presence and jewelry in Mesoamerica?

[Forum Monk]

Sorry if "black magic" evoked images of book burning as that was not my intention. Poor choice of words in retrospect. What I mean is, its mental gymnastics.

Ish, everytime I disagree with your conclusions, your only rebuttal is an attack on my knoweldge of the topic but this not the issue. I understand astronomy very well, I understand physics and mathematics moderately well and I understand computer science very well. I see many people play mental gymastics with numbers and claim ancient knowledge of all sorts of things like precession, speed of light, planets beyond the naked-eye ones, etc, etc, etc. It strikes me as disingenuous that the only way these conclusions can be reached is through some metaphorical or imprecise interpretation of the texts. Apparently ancient people the world over were incapable of saying what they meant.

I had much more to say but just deleted it. Its pointless.

I disagree and I am sorry for hijacking someone's thread.

[rich]

FM - it's not pointless when someone of your intellect puts your cents in there - I really wish you didn't delete it even if I or anyone else might not have agreed. It's the spice of life that makes it interesting!

[Ishtar]

Sorry if "black magic" evoked images of book burning as that was not my intention. Poor choice of words in retrospect. What I mean is, its mental gymnastics.

OK. That's better.

Ish, everytime I disagree with your conclusions, your only rebuttal is an attack on my knoweldge of the topic but this not the issue.

I don't mean to be rude, but I do this is because you seem to pronounce on, for example, what Vedic scholars say in a manner as if you spend your time sitting around chatting with them - when I know that you don't know any and that even if you did, that you're not in a position to discriminate between what Vedic scholars say any more than I could discrimate between what quantum physicists say.

I understand astronomy very well, I understand physics and mathematics moderately well and I understand computer science very well. I see many people play mental gymastics with numbers and claim ancient knowledge of all sorts of things like precession, speed of light, planets beyond the naked-eye ones, etc, etc, etc. It strikes me as disingenuous that the only way these conclusions can be reached is through some metaphorical or imprecise interpretation of the texts.

Monk, from what I know of you, I think you are quite a literal thinker and thus have a problem with metaphor. That's fine... it's not a criticism. Maybe if you weren't so literal, you wouldn't be as brilliant as you are in certain areas. But there are those who can read metaphor more easily, and they can see these things ... the ancients were actually very clever in how the encoded metaphor, and sometimes put metaphors within metaphors and even metaphors within metaphors within metaphors. One south American shaman calls this way of communicating 'twisted twisted' and boy, it is sometimes!

It's one of those right hemisphere of the brain/left hemisphre of the brain things.

Apparently ancient people the world over were incapable of saying what they meant.

Not incapable, FM. They were perfectly capable ... they deliberately hid the knowledge in metaphor which we are only now untangling. They secrets of astronomy were only taught to a privileged few in the priesthoods and most of what they were taught they had to remember in their heads. Very little was writtten down.

But their approach was not the same one used by science today - it was much more metaphysical, utilising both sides of the brain with meditation, dreams and listening to the spirits, which is why the Vedas is often referred to as 'sruti' - that which is heard. And they used thought as a tool - in the same way we are in the discussion about balloons and voids and so on in the dark energy thread.

I don't know if you read the article I posted earlier by Kak, but this was in the conclusion:

Our survey of these topics did not stress enough one aspect of Indian thought that sets it apart from that of most other nations, viz. the belief that thought by itself can lead to objective knowledge. Being counter to the reductionist program of mainstream science, this aspect of Indian thought has been bitterly condemned by most historians of science as being irrational and mystical. Now that reductionism is in retreat in mainstream science itself one would expect a less emotional assessment of Indian ideas. We can hope to address issues such as how do some ideas in India happen to be ages ahead of their times.

Students of scientific creativity increasingly accept that conceptual advances do not appear in any rational manner. Might then one accept the claim of Srinivasa Ramanujan that his theorems were revealed to him in his dreams by the goddess Namagiri? This claim, so persistently made by Ramanujan, has generally been dismissed by his biographers (see, for
example, Kanigel, 1991). Were Ramanujan's astonishing discoveries instrumented by the autonomously creative potential of consciousness, represented by him by the image of Namagiri? If that be the case then the marvellous imagination shown in Yoga-Vasishtha and other Indian texts becomes easier to comprehend.

Your contributions are never pointless, FM - but we are bound to differ because we think differently. I've enjoyed the conversation anyway - as ever. So thanks!

[Forum Monk]

I think you are quite a literal thinker and thus have a problem with metaphor.

I'm an engineer, Ish.
An engineer's mind is very analytical.



We can continue another time and place. It takes a lot of effort and time to present evidence and I usually end up neglecting more important things when I get started into these discussions.

[War Arrow]

For what little it may be worth, I've tended to "side" (?) with FM here in that I find myself a little sceptical about these Vedic geezers (of whom I admittedly know little) simply on the grounds that anceient knowledge of the speed of light is an incredible claim.

On the other hand, with regard to the maddening ambiguity of the ancients, I've recently come to appreciate this stuff after reading Gordon Brotherstone's British Museum book on the Mexican solar calendar - the Mexica (Aztecs) have traditionally been regarded as unsophisticated slow learners who borrowed the more conspicuously sophisticated Mayan calendar, yet Brotherstone has shown this to be utter crap. Annoyingly (for us at least) the pertinent figures are captured entirely in pictograms, and worse still, in the subtleties of different ways of showing certain pictograms (I mean stuff like whether the anthropomorphic pictogram has a smiley face or is noticably larger than another pictogram) which, as it turns out, record borderline comical subtleties of timekeeping to do with the sidereal year, 52 year leap adjustments and so on. When I started the book I was thinking 'oh come on, Gordon' but ended up utterly convinced.

So what I'm saying is maybe, though having just got in from a night on the razz, I'm probably rambling a bit.

[Cognito]

What about the Phoenician boat? I thought that eveyrone would be really pleased with me for coming up with a boat, for once? But there's been no comment ...

Ish, I'm pleased; thanks for the boat!

[Minimalist]

Do I have to go back through the whole thread looking for that boat, Ish?

[Ishtar]

Jeez. Some people around here are so lazy!



Min, here is the post in its entirety:

War Arrow

I think you mentioned about how Africa has been so little explored archaeologically in comparison with Egypt.

There are other ways, though, to explore African history, notably in the orally handed down old stories of the African people, listening to how they tell it in their own words. And unlike much of mythology around the world, many African ones I've read seem to be literal and a deliberate means of preserving history.

Two books I can recommend:

One is Malidome Patrice Some's Of Water and the Spirit, which is a first hand account about how shamanism was destroyed in Africa by the Jesuits. But he also recounts his tribe, the Dagara of Burkino Faso's old stories which seem to go back to their own version of the The Fall.

The other recommended book contains stories consisting of African tribal history by Credo Mutwa, Indaba My Children. In this book, Mutwa recounts all the old Bantu stories which includes an invasion by what sounds like the Phoenicians, which I don't think is in any of our history books.

Here are some drawings from the book, taken from an eye witness account describing one of the Phoenician warriors and the Phoenician boat:

[Ishtar]

I think you are quite a literal thinker and thus have a problem with metaphor.

I'm an engineer, Ish.
An engineer's mind is very analytical.

Sure, and thank gods for engineers ... otherwise, we wouldn't be talking at all, not on a computer anyway!

We can continue another time and place. It takes a lot of effort and time to present evidence and I usually end up neglecting more important things when I get started into these discussions.

I look forward to it!

[Ishtar]

.... the Mexica (Aztecs) have traditionally been regarded as unsophisticated slow learners who borrowed the more conspicuously sophisticated Mayan calendar, yet Brotherstone has shown this to be utter crap. Annoyingly (for us at least) the pertinent figures are captured entirely in pictograms, and worse still, in the subtleties of different ways of showing certain pictograms (I mean stuff like whether the anthropomorphic pictogram has a smiley face or is noticably larger than another pictogram) which, as it turns out, record borderline comical subtleties of timekeeping to do with the sidereal year, 52 year leap adjustments and so on. When I started the book I was thinking 'oh come on, Gordon' but ended up utterly convinced..

This is at the heart of the misunderstandings between us and the ancients, - how we think and which part of our brain we use when we do so.

The ancients thought in pictures and they communicated in pictures. Their stories are intended to convey meaning through pictures (metaphor) rather than the literal meaning of words. Even the sound the word made was part of the overall communication and this is difficult with the Egyptians because although we can transcribe their hieroglyphics to the best of our ability, we don't know what sounds the words made.

For example, Isis we normally pronounce as eye-sis. But it is now thought that it was probably more like ee-sah, although we cannot be certain.

Anyway, we know (from studying stroke victims) that we use the right side of our brain to think and communicate in pictures, and the left side to think in words. This is why a shaman when interviewed on what he saw in trance said: "I see my thoughts", whereas we would say that we hear our thoughts.

The right hand side also thinks more subjectively while the left thinks objectively.

So the yawning Grand Canyon between how we think and how the ancients thought will not be discovered through subjecting the DNA of fossils to ever closer scrutiny in a laboratory. It is found instead in the longitudinal fissure of our own brains, which divides the left and right hemispheres - and the trace state is the rainbow bridge which shamans use to cross it every day.

[War Arrow]

The ancients thought in pictures and they communicated in pictures. Their stories are intended to convey meaning through pictures (metaphor) rather than the literal meaning of words. Even the sound the word made was part of the overall communication and this is difficult with the Egyptians because although we can transcribe their hieroglyphics to the best of our ability, we don't know what sounds the words made.

For example, Isis we normally pronounce as eye-sis. But it is now thought that it was probably more like ee-sah, although we cannot be certain.

Point taken, though it's probably worth noting that in the example of these calendrical pictograms, each carries a very specific meaning - ie: a reference to either a twenty-day festival period (ihuitl) or constellation (the constellation xonecuilli figures heavily, though I can't remember what that was right now, maybe the plaeides). Otherwise yes, pictograms carry meaning or even clusters of related meanings rather than specific words - that's what you meant, right?

It's sadly ironic that whilst Mixteca-Puebla Mexican pictograms could be read by speakers of almost any Mesoamerican language (their being semiotic rather than phonetic) with that element of the culture now lost, it's likely that most surviving painted books will remain entirely beyond translation.

[Ishtar]

Otherwise yes, pictograms carry meaning or even clusters of related meanings rather than specific words - that's what you meant, right?

I like to think of it as layers of meaning, with the sound of it also being one of the layers.

[Cognito]

It's sadly ironic that whilst Mixteca-Puebla Mexican pictograms could be read by speakers of almost any Mesoamerican language (their being semiotic rather than phonetic) with that element of the culture now lost, it's likely that most surviving painted books will remain entirely beyond translation.

W/A, in addition to New World codices I am adding our current inability to read pictographs. The one below is obviously me
surrounded by morons at work:

[War Arrow]

Otherwise yes, pictograms carry meaning or even clusters of related meanings rather than specific words - that's what you meant, right?

I like to think of it as layers of meaning, with the sound of it also being one of the layers.

Hmmm... now that I think about it Nahuatl itself does seem to have a strong tendency to carry multiple meanings or even puns... words and pictograms are different of course, but maybe this hints at a certain thought process behind both...

[Minimalist]

Here are some drawings from the book, taken from an eye witness account describing one of the Phoenician warriors and the Phoenician boat:

Phoenicians or Carthaginians? Recall that the Romans called them "Poeni" and we have historical record of Carthaginian exploration down the West Coast of Africa. Carthage had a bad habit of relying on mercenaries but your drawing is a fair representation of this re-enactor.